The arduous road across the Pyrenees to the monastery of Montserrat in Catalonia was undertaken by thousands of pilgrims in the middle ages. The monks there, alarmed by the (apparently quite secular) singing and dancing in the plaza, created a book of pious songs for the pilgrims to entertain each other while they waited to visit the shrine of the Virgin of Montserrat. The 10 songs preserved in the Llibre Vermell (Red Book), written in various styles in both Latin and vernacular (Catalan), are as fresh and delightful today as they were in the fourteenth century.